Glad To Be Here

Last July 4th, I wrote a column about how America was an okay place to be. There's a lot of crap that has happened in the past year to make some people doubt that, but I still stand by my assertion.

Some people say they want to move  that Europe or Australia or anywhere but America would be better. But I like it here. So I will honor our country this July 4th by making fun of the crap that happened everywhere else this weekend.

Let's start with Finland, where 7,000 people watched two Estonian students win Finland's seventh annual wife-carrying world championship by carrying a woman 830 feet through a pool and over hurdles in just over a minute. The champions were pumped by the crowd who loudly cheered, "why the hell are we watching this?" Okay, so the crowd really enjoyed it. But a wife-carrying world championship? I guess there are rednecks everywhere.

There are also hookers everywhere, as evident in the new policy in which the Dutch government hands out "seals of quality" for better run brothels. I can just imagine the size of the line forming to inspect them. "I don't know, these hookers aren't as clean as the ones from the last brothel we had sex in."

And while strippers aren't always hookers, I felt this would be a good time for a lovely Canadian story that involved two "dancers" attacking a third at a strip club. According to the Associated Press, the two felt the dancer had a "snooty attitude." I haven't been in that many strip clubs, but isn't that kind of the point?

Speaking of strippers, a 55-year-old German sex therapist who has been repeatedly arrested for jogging nude was just fined $750. The man argued that being naked is his civil right. That's just weird  maybe he should see a sex therapist. Actually, this guy's strategy for drumming up business is brilliant. You know much erectile dysfunction he's causing just by jogging naked?

And here's a quaint erectile dysfunction story: South Korean police arrested a man and confiscated 3,000 phony Viagra pills. Which is too bad, because the guy would have been the toast of the cell block if those pills were real.

"Ah, geez  am I really getting paroled? We're busy!"

Authorities say that people should have been tipped off to the fake Viagra because of how cheap it was. I suggest that they also notice that someone is trying to sell them sex medicine out of the trunk of a Buick.

One thing that's not cheap is a scoop of mud from England's Glastonbury music festival. The mud sold for the equivalent of $890 US on eBay, birthing the new phrase, "dirt expensive." The mud was more expensive than the standard price for a scalped ticket, making the purchase a bit curious. And reinforcing the already birthed phrase, "dirt stupid." When asked what he'd do with all the money, the mud's auctioneer said he planned on inspecting some brothels.

I know, I know. There are plenty of dumb things that happen in America, too, but we've got 364 days a year to talk about that stuff. But for all my foreign readers, there is one American story from this weekend that bears mentioning.

As if the Florida election board wasn't made fun of enough already, a list of residents who couldn't vote due to their felony convictions was released this weekend. Almost 50,000 people on it never committed a crime, making authorities scramble to fix the error. However, many of the wrongly categorized citizens have not bothered to come forward and identify themselves, confessing, "we were just going to vote for Buchanan anyway." Which, if it happened, would probably make me move.